Infinite Slice
I have been thinking about writing this post for three months, which hilariously invalidates all the advice I am about to attempt to share of what I have learned lately.
If you are like me, you live in a perennial merry go round of being pleased and disgusted with your work, your appearance, your accomplishments etc.
Everyone I know has some part of their life that goes up and down like the stock market.
And everyone I know that isn’t like that is either enlightened at a level I can’t achieve or they are full of shit.
To be human is to be constantly ascending or descending, it’s what makes us normal, a variable beat is so human even our hearts speed up and slow down.
I just completed a big work task not that long ago and its times like that that my brain wanders the most. The natural up and down rhythm of my personality goes into double time. I love what I’m doing, I hate it. I see the value, the value is an illusion etc. I’m sure you know it.
But what I have come back to is a simple awareness, it’s so stupid I can’t believe I have to write it, but I do because even I need to hear it.
When you’re doing a hard task, a challenge beyond yourself,
Break
It
Down.
Sometimes, the first step in construction is ironically deconstruction.
I’ll never forget my first time competing in Jiu Jitsu. I had recently lost my brother and marriage and bjj was a new endeavor. It was a tool I was using to face death, and find some kind of peace on the other side. If that sounds dramatic I don’t fucking care. I had to take my grief somewhere, this was as good a place as any.
In my first match, I drew this shaved head danish guy that would go on to win the whole tournament and get his blue belt shortly thereafter. I really didn’t have a shot. But I started well against him, and somehow against all odds ended up on top in a position called half guard. Basically I was half way to scoring on him but of course he knew that too.
My next step in getting control of this bastard was getting an underhook. My coach was screaming at me to get the underhook. All the other coaches said it too, everyone is screaming at me to get the underhook.
Here’s the problem, I have no idea what an underhook is. They may as well have been speaking a different language.
I ended up losing, but I learned something valuable that I later applied to my own kids classes.
You can only expect from someone, or yourself, what you already understand. If you don’t understand it yet, you can’t expect it..yet.
When I taught/teach kids or adults, I take great delight in the process of simplifying an idea to its most raw ingredients. This brings the foreign into the realm of understanding and thus something we can control.
Example, If I could go back and coach myself, I would have shouted for me to get the underhook too just like my coach.
But after the third time of yelling it and seeing me not do it, I would have come to three conclusions
1. I was too overwhelmed to interpret the advice in the heat of the moment
2. I was prideful and didn’t want to listen (not true in my case but can be)
3. I don’t know what the fuck an underhook is or why I need it and need a simpler step.
So if yelling for this move wasn’t working, my next prompt would be to say “take your right arm and put it under his arm pit and lean on him with your body, which in simple form is an underhook.
I think its important that whether you are doing something you are good at, or something that is beyond you, some times your overwhelm is directly proportional to your lack of creating a simpler step for yourself.
For example, I know that right now I need to switch a bank account on a listing I manage. I’ve needed to do it for a month. But I HATE dealing with this one sight I would have to use, and just the thought makes me want to punch drywall Kyle style.
But would it be so wrong if I made a goal to open the website? Open it, do nothing, then close it and scratch it off the list for the day (with the goal to open it, make one change the next day?).
A lot of times our lack of progress is because we want to do things at the pace that it can in theory if the moon is right if the best dude in the world is doing it pace. But bad news, you are not them, you’ll likely never be them, and if you don’t recognize that and start somewhere you’ll definitely never be them.
Right now I am out of shape. Its very hard on my ego. Whats worse, I’m in a phase of life in which I just don’t have a lot of extra energy to do things that would keep my shit together. I’m living in my home town for a few weeks as I help get my girlfriend and pets moved to nyc for a move up here. Honestly its not the time for vanity. But does that excuse me from everything? Nope. So at the advice of my buddy Greg I downloaded a running plan and have been following it.
Guess what, its not that hard. Its not something that would make a motivational Instagram story. I’m half embarrassed by my progress.
But on a deeper level, I know I’m taking action on something that matters in a way that I can keep up.
If you listen to motivational speakers, one thing they talk a lot about is “taking massive action”. That’s true, no denying it. But the counter point is this:
take sustainable action.
You going to the gym and maxing out your deadlift one day is useless. You doing body weight squats throughout your day consistently and with humility will get you farther faster and healthier.
Every result is the product of a habit. In America, we all watch the results, we LOVE results, we are drunk on results. But the habits is something that no one likes to see. Because a habit means I am accountable to do something.
When I think about hard tasks that I still need to do, a part of me gets mad. I hate being bad at stuff, I hate waiting, etc. but I think back to that cartoon where someone is cutting up a ham and they cut a slice so thin that its transparent.
If life is forcing you to eat something you don’t like but have to, its better to take a thin slice then none. And if that is too big, give yourself permission to cut it smaller.
Smaller and bigger go on for infinity.
Use that to your advantage.